http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
ISRAELI Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently infuriated President
Bush by drawing a parallel between the sell-out of Czechoslovakia by Britain
and France before World War II and the demands for dangerous concessions
being made of his country by the U.S. government today. While there are
certain similarities, on reflection, a more accurate analogy would be
between what Britain did to her principal ally, France, rather than what
they both did to the Czechoslovaks.

Israel today, like France in the early-to-mid-1930s, is the
mightiest military power in its region. As was also true in France before
World War II, Israel has been led for years by weak governments under the
sway of leftists convinced that unilateral disarmament and appeasement
constitute a reliable alternative to conflict with increasingly dangerous
neighbors.

In addition, for much of the past decade, American administrations
have been encouraging -- and, from time to time, extorting -- concessions
from Israel, much as the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments in pre-war
Britain endorsed and occasionally induced declining French defense spending
and military preparedness. In 1934, Winston Churchill famously declared
that "I cannot imagine a more dangerous policy" than one of deliberately
weakening an important ally, upon whose strength one's own security may
significantly rely.

The question the government and people of the United States must
address immediately is: Should we regard Israel as a vital strategic ally
in the war on terrorism and refrain from repeating the mistakes made by
Britain towards France six decades ago? Or can we safely indulge in a
deceit similar to that earlier time's -- that concessions that weaken,
perhaps mortally, one of our most important bulwarks against a common enemy
can be made at no peril to our security?

The American people appear to have few illusions on this score. A
survey conducted on 12-13 October by pollster John McLaughlin suggests that
they continue overwhelmingly (72.9%) and strongly to support Israel. The
Congress has been at least as supportive. In fact, in recent hearings
before the House International Relations Committee, Assistant Secretary of
State for Near East Affairs William Burns was bitterly assailed by
legislators from both parties for his department's recent denunciations of
Israeli efforts to defend themselves -- efforts identical in purpose, if not
method or success (to date), to our own against Osama bin Laden and Company.

For his part, President Bush has made clear that he is committed to
the security and well-being of Israel. His refusal to meet with Yasser
Arafat so long as the Palestinian Authority remains a sponsor of terror
against the Jewish State -- a tangible sign of Mr. Bush's determination not
to coerce Israel into making compromises with which it cannot live -- has
been commendable and one of the most dramatic departures from the failed
foreign policies and practices of his predecessor.

Yet, in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the war on terror
they unleashed, the Bush Administration has come under intense pressure not
only to pick up where Bill Clinton left off in squeezing dangerous
concessions from Israel, but going where even he dared not go. According to
the Boston Globe of October 10, "The Bush Administration is prepared in the
next few weeks to publicly increase pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon to accept not only a Palestinian state but a viable Palestinian
homeland that includes a 'shared Jerusalem as its capital.'" Forcing Israel
to "share" not just suburbs of Jerusalem but the city itself would surpass
any "vision" previously embraced by the U.S. government.

The pressure to take such steps comes from a number of quarters.
First, there are influential figures with close ties to the Arab world like
the Mr. Bush's father and his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft,
who was recently given an official advisory function as chairman of the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Then, there are the
Arabists in the State Department, who have as clients more than two-dozen
Arab/Islamic countries while there is, of course, only one Jewish State --
and its desk is manned by foreign service officers whose future advancement
will depend on good postings elsewhere in the region.

Next, there are the so-called "moderate" leaders in the Arab world.
Thus far, their diplomatic stroke has been undiminished, if not actually
enhanced, by the war on terror. This is all the more extraordinary insofar
as many Americans have recently learned to their horror about such
"friends'" thoroughly immoderate, but longstanding, practice of using
virulent anti-Israeli and anti-American propaganda as a sort of social
safety valve. This device may allow the anger of these countries'
burgeoning populations of poor young males to be diverted away from their
generally repressive governments -- but only at our expense.

Finally, there are the Islamic organizations in this country that
the President has been encouraged to cultivate -- despite the solidarity
some of their leaders have long expressed with terrorist groups responsible
for the murder not only of Israeli women and children, but of American
citizens, as well.

At the moment, the foregoing appear to be advancing a common agenda
with considerable sympathetic treatment from the international press:
Israel's occupation of Arab lands helps legitimate Islamist terror against
her ally, the United States. If only the Jewish State ended that
occupation, we are assured, Israel could live in peace and much of the anger
felt towards us around the world would dissipate. Create a Palestinian
state, these influential forces insist, and we will be assured of Arab
support, bases, oil and solidarity in the war on terror.

The problem is that the Arab "street" -- and particularly the
Palestinian Arabs -- to which we are supposedly appealing have been
thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that Israel's presence on any territory
amounts to its occupation. Arafat has repeatedly assured his constituents
that the peace process is not a basis for legitimating a permanent Jewish
State in the Arabs' midst. It is, instead, the instrument for realizing a
twenty-seven-year-old "phased plan" for the destruction of Israel and the
liberation of all "Palestine."

As with Hitler before the war, further weakening of an important
Western power in the face of intimidation -- and a growing ability to act on
it -- will be an invitation for aggression, not a formula for real peace.
Rewarding terror by forcing more territorial and other concessions on Israel
risks repeating Britain's mistake with respect to France, turning a valuable
ally into a strategic liability and gravely weakening our shared ability to
contend with a common -- and ever more lethal --
danger.